


Coming Back

by Smediterranea



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 13:25:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5745508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smediterranea/pseuds/Smediterranea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Feels like it’s teaching you the wrong lesson, though.”<br/>“What do you mean?”<br/>“Instead of encouraging you to come back, it’s like I’m encouraging you to leave on more missions.”<br/>Poe laughs. “No way, bud. I’ll always come back.”<br/>Until one day, he doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Back

The lull in action after the destruction of the Starkiller base should be relaxing, but Poe has hardly ever felt more stressed. His days stretch wide and empty before him. He tries to develop a semblance of a routine — morning tinkering on his ship, afternoon visits to the unresponsive Finn, evenings spent playing round after round of cards with his fellow pilots — but he feels an itch beneath the calm surface of his life. He’s not really doing anything, at least not anything that matters. He’s not helping the Resistance and he’s not helping Finn get better. Every day should be a precious reminder of what a tranquil life would be like, but it just feels like an interminable chore.

It takes two weeks, but the med droids finally decide to stop Finn’s medically-induced coma. When Finn finally opens his eyes, Poe lets out a huge whoop and smacks a loud kiss to Finn’s forehead. He is unceremoniously kicked out of the room for the rest of the day for “loud, distressing noises.” Finn, in a haze of sedatives, later confesses he has no memory of Poe’s jubilant celebration, but Poe swaggers around the base for the rest of the day grinning ear to ear.

He has to plead with the med droids to let him back in the next morning, but his charm prevails and he’s allowed to visit for up to three non-consecutive hours a day. Finn seems happy to see a familiar face, but it’s a strain to stay awake for a full hour, let alone keep up a conversation. Poe fills the silence with his own tales, some entirely true and some very exaggerated. Finn punctuates the tales with a sleepy “you’re full of bantha shit,” every so often and Poe laughs and laughs.

It does not escape Poe’s attention that his friendship with Finn has developed into a ridiculous, full-blown crush within only a few weeks.

“Just don’t think about it,” he mutters to himself.

[ _Doesn’t seem to be working_ ] BB-8 chirps.

*** 

The Resistance doesn’t rest for long, so Poe is back up in the sky more often than not. The first time he tells Finn he’ll be gone on a week-long reconnaissance mission, he doesn’t miss the way his friend’s smile flickers before telling him to stay safe. So Poe spends his last few hours making his final adjustments on his X-wing and getting BB-8 to round up as many people as possible. He’s scrawled dates down on a piece of paper and makes everyone sign up for at least twenty minutes when they can go visit Finn. Most people are hesitant — what are they even going to talk to an ex-Stormtrooper about if Poe has _strictly_ forbidden anyone from asking about his past?

“Tell Finn about your home planet. Tell him about your siblings. Tell him that unbearably boring story you told us last night in the mess. It doesn’t matter, just go see him.”

When Poe gets back a week later, Finn beams at him and proceeds to recount every single story he’s heard. Turns out several people came back more than once, including a new recruit with an extra set of arms who spent three hours trying to teach Finn how to juggle. Finn ends up hitting Poe in the head with an orange when he tries to demonstrate, but Poe is so pleased to see Finn laughing that he merely tosses the orange back so Finn can start again.

It becomes a familiar pattern. After every mission, Poe is greeted on the tarmac by a gaggle of Resistance members who immediately debrief him — not on war materiel, like he’s used to, but on what Finn has been up to in his absence. It turns out Finn loves ghost stories; he finds them positively hysterical and once laughed so hard, he tore a stitch in his shoulder and the med droid kicked everyone out for two days. Finn equally loves romantic stories, but treats them with grave solemnity. People try to top one another’s embarrassing stories of their failed attempts at romance, but Finn never laughs, just stares with wide eyes and asks them if it ever worked. Finn takes the idea of love very, very seriously. Everyone on the base is a little bit in love with Finn.

By some scheduling miracle, Poe is on base the day Finn is released from the med bay. He loops his arm over Finn’s shoulders and escorts him to the mess hall where they are greeted by a thunderous standing ovation.

“ _Finn! Finn! Finn! Finn!_ ” come the shouts of the Resistance and Poe is smiling so hard, it feels like his face is going to crack in half. It takes Finn almost an hour to hug everyone in thanks, but Poe follows him silently with a quiet nod of appreciation to his friends for doing this for Finn.

The sound echoes in his head all night: _Finn! Finn! Finn! Finn!_

 ***

It’s Rey who first confronts him about it, and he’s so surprised he leaps to his feet and bangs his head, hard, on the wing of his ship.

“Does Finn know you have a crush on him?”

“Wha— _kriffing damn it!_ ”

He rubs his head for a moment, as if that will make Rey forget her question. She watches him with a cool detachment. He wonders how she figured it out so fast — six months off who knows where with Luke Skywalker and she’s only been back for a few days. His heart sinks to somewhere near his feet.

“How did you — you didn’t use… _the Force_ —?" 

“Of course I didn’t use the Force to invade your mind. You would’ve felt it. And you’re really obvious." 

“I am not.” An uncharacteristic blush consumes his face.

“I spent practically my whole life in a desert with no one in it and even I can tell you’re crazy about him. Does he know you like him?”

Poe is mercifully saved from answering when someone yells that General Organa wants to see him _now_. He practically sprints off of the tarmac.

The truth is that Poe isn’t sure if Finn knows. Poe hasn’t exactly been very subtle, and he’s certainly been very affectionate, but Finn is Finn. Poe’s seen him disassemble and reassemble a blaster in twenty three seconds, and yet be totally flummoxed when presented a drinking straw. Poe doesn’t want to force his complete infatuation onto someone who’s been told what to think his whole life. He doesn’t want Finn’s first friend to turn into a creep who secretly lusts after him.

And yet.

Poe isn’t sure that Finn _doesn’t_ know how he feels. They’ve fallen into some strange habits, ones that aren’t explicitly romantic, but they are definitely more intimate than Poe would use with any other friend.

It had started gradually. Finn would come to Poe’s room the first few nights out of the med bay, and Poe was happy to regale him with stories or an extra round of cards. Sometimes Finn’s back would hurt and he would lie in Poe’s bed while Poe pulled up a chair next to him. Then after one particularly long and grueling mission, Poe could barely keep himself upright in the chair and, loathe to kick Finn out and call it a night, had simply crawled into bed next to him. That was the first night they slept side by side and as weeks turned into months, Poe realized he was no longer sure the last time they _didn’t_ fall asleep next to one another.

Their evenings were occasionally quiet — too tired from Finn’s training and Poe’s missions, they would quietly read or listen to music. Once, exhausted from a three-day flight, Poe had made the mistake of selecting music that reminded him of his long-deceased mother. He could feel tears starting to prickle at the corners of his eyes when Finn silently slid his hand into Poe’s. With their fingers still intertwined, Poe drifted off to sleep.

And now it had been at least two months of falling asleep _holding hands_ , and Poe still hadn’t figured out what to do about it.

Poe spends the rest of the day feeling nervous and jumpy. He makes the mistake of letting Snap mix him a drink when they play cards, and he’s more than a little buzzed when he and Finn end up back in his bed. He rolls over to face Finn and finds himself blurting out, “I think I’m in love with you.”

Finn doesn’t waste a second closing the gap between them and their kiss is everything Poe had ached for the past few months. Poe kisses him back with increasing fervor, only pausing to occasionally grin madly at each other in the dark.

They fall asleep like they always do, holding hands, except this time they’re not wearing any pants.

 ***

Finn catapults up the ranks of the Resistance at a dizzying speed.

He’s already spent years training as a soldier, and even his years as a sanitation worker proves unbelievably valuable to the Resistance. Finn understands the First Order mindset: how they plan, how they operate, what their weaknesses are. He knows how to make the Resistance soldiers even more efficient, exploit the First Order’s limitations. His fellow fighters admire his skills and respect his work ethic. It doesn’t hurt that he also has the respect and admiration of Commander Poe Dameron and a certain jedi named Rey.

When Finn is promoted to captain, Poe gets him roaring drunk and, in their attempts to cause some mayhem, accidentally traps them both in a closet.

Poe turns to Finn, grinning. “Well, this adventure is a bust, but I promise we’ll go on some great adventures together, buddy.”

Finn looks at him with big, solemn eyes, and wraps his hand around Poe’s. “You’re my greatest adventure.”

They decide to get married.

*** 

For being at war, Poe has to admit his life isn’t so bad. He gets to spend his days flying around the galaxy, fighting for the people he loves. He’s lucky that the one person he loves most is still alive, which is more than he can say for a lot of his fellow Resistance fighters. Poe and Finn have an agreement: nothing necessarily stupid or risky. Neither of them follow it that closely despite their best efforts.

Whenever Poe returns after a long mission, Finn is waiting for him on the tarmac. Finn gives him a kiss and chastely holds his hand all through dinner. Then he drags Poe back to their place and fucks him stupid all night. Poe routinely requests the next morning off when he lands; he’s pretty sure General Organa can see straight through his “ _need to sort through files_ ” lie, but she lets him do it anyway.

“Finn, you spoil me,” Poe drawls after one particularly passionate evening.

“I know,” Finn grins in the dark. “Feels like it’s teaching you the wrong lesson, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Instead of encouraging you to come back to _this_ —” Finn gives Poe’s ass a firm squeeze — “it’s like I’m encouraging you to leave on more missions.”

Poe laughs. “No way, bud. I’ll always come back.”

Until one day, he doesn’t.

*** 

It’s almost a year to the day when they finally find him.

He’s been whittled away to almost nothing - a hundred pounds soaking wet with a long beard streaked with gray and a thicket of matted hair. The only thing that identifies him as Poe Dameron is the dirty wedding ring jammed onto his left hand.

Poe had heard of the prison camps before he was captured. The First Order needed workers to mine for the ore they used in all of their ships. Everything Poe had ever blown up in his X-wing had been mined by the exhausted hands of a prisoner in one of these camps. Poe assumed when he had been captured by the First Order that he would be summarily executed, but instead they had sent him here, to a moon galaxies away from home. A place where he would be forgotten, tormented to know that the work keeping him alive was building an army to destroy his friends.

There were very perks of being kept alive. The planet was surprisingly hospitable, not like the frozen tundra of Hoth or the broiling desert of Jakku. The guards at this particular camp were also not inclined to remove any body parts from their prisoners as punishment; it was much easier to work if you had all your fingers intact, and the troopers needed to make sure their production numbers were high enough. This was where the blessings ended. There was never enough to eat and while the troopers worked in methodical shifts, the prisoners did not. Some nights Poe would sleep for four hours before the next shift, but the next night would be given only minutes of rest. He tried to count the days at first, but all he could say for certain at this point was that it had been over three months. The numbers he could still count were the dead he had seen: thirty seven from exhaustion, sixty four from various diseases, and twelve from intentionally provoking the guards. He spent his long days wondering whether he should try to add himself to the list of the dead.

He does not think of Finn. The people who think of their loved ones are the first to die, the first to succumb to madness and attack the guards. Poe is lucky; he sneaks his wedding ring into the camp by hiding it behind his teeth. He buries next to the pole by the western guard house. He’s almost caught, and is whipped mercilessly for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they never uncover the small patch of disturbed earth. But Poe does not think of his ring, he does not think of Finn, or Rey, or BB-8 or any of his friends. Poe counts the dead and the number of guards and the number of bites of food he’s managed to get.

Poe hears the fighters five miles off. He almost weeps at the sound; it wouldn’t be the first time he’s hallucinated a rescue coming. In the past few weeks, he hasn’t even dreamed of a rescue, just of seeing his ship one last time, flying free through the stars. But his hallucination grows louder and louder still, and his fellow prisoners seem to hear it, too. Poe barely has time to duck before the eastern guard tower is hit and comes crashing down.

The chaos is brief. A surge of bodies makes for the eastern tower and prisoners stream through the hole in the gate. A few prisoners are trying to jump the Stormtroopers and take revenge, but most are fleeing, trying to run as far away as they can, as if this tiny moon has anything on it other than more First Order outposts. Once they make it out the gate, Poe is one of the few left standing in camp. He takes off for the western guard tower, grabbing one of the fallen trooper’s blasters. The ships swoop over his head, a fleet of TIE fighters trying to push the Resistance back. They won’t give up this moon easily; they desperately need the ore for a new base.

The fighting intensifies. Poe ducks behind the leaning shacks the prisoners were housed in as cover while he fires on the troops in his way. His chest is heaving with exhaustion. He hasn’t slept for more than three hours in the past two days, but he has to do this. Whoever is up there in the sky needs ground support and Poe is all they’ve got.

The troops stationed with the prisoners are ill-trained for a fight. Poe takes out a half dozen on his own, aiming for the weak spot behind their helmets that Finn told him about. He makes it all the way to the guard tower and shoots down four more before a blast hits him squarely on his chest. The world spins, Poe’s left hand scratching the earth frantically while he fires his blaster without any semblance of aim. He hears the whine of an X-wing above him and the tower explodes, sending the remaining guards tumbling to the ground. He feels cold metal in his hand and shakily forces the ring back on his finger.

His last thought sounds like the shouts of his friends years ago when he walked into the mess hall, arm slung around warm shoulders, “ _Finn! Finn! Finn! Finn!_ ”

***

He wakes in fits and starts, but he doesn’t remember any of it. He’s been pumped with all sorts of anesthetics and analgesics to fix the blast wound on his chest, and he can barely stay conscious for more than a few minutes.

He first realizes that he’s not dead when he finds himself in the middle of a conversation with Rey.

“You have to tell him, Rey. Tell him I loved him. Tell him he was my greatest adventure.”

Rey looks at him with distant, sad eyes. “I remember, Poe. You already told me.”

Poe frowns, because he has no memory of telling her anything, but it is, in fact, the third time he’s woken up and told her this. He blinks into the darkness of the room.

“Do you want to see him now?” she asks quietly. “Finn?”

Poe’s heart lurches in fear. “No!” he shouts, the sound surprising the both of them. “No. No, he can’t see me. I’m not — I’m not…” He searches for the words, his eyes wide and frightened.

“Ready?”

“— the same,” he finishes. “I’m not… _Poe_. Not anymore.”

Rey frowns, and he can tell she’s ready to protest, but a med droid seizes the opportunity to ask him a barrage of questions.

When he finally finishes with the droid, Rey is gone.

*** 

Poe yelps the first time he passes a mirror.

The horrible mess of his hair has been inexpertly cut away and the beard trimmed to a more manageable length. There’s still an angry welt scaling its way up his neck from the blaster wound, but its his eyes that startle him. They’re sunken deep into his head and yet his shrunken cheeks make them appear huge and black. There’s strangely almost no sign of the crow’s feet Finn liked to kiss when teasing him about his age. Poe had huffed that Finn would get them someday, and that it was rude to tease him about his wrinkles.

“I like them,” Finn would whisper in his ear. “They’re from smiling. I want you to have a hundred of them.” And Poe would smile and think that every line on his face would be worth it if it made Finn happy.

In the time he’s been in the med bay, the only contact Poe has had is with BB-8 and the med droids. Rey hasn’t returned and he’s asked that everyone else be barred from his room. Anyone else coming in would want to visit _Poe_ , but _Poe_ has been dead for a year, and all that’s left is this strange husk of a man who just happens to wear Poe Dameron’s wedding ring.

BB-8 only made the mistake of mentioning Finn once.

[ _Poe. You must see Finn._ ]

“No.”

BB-8 rotated laterally, conveying its annoyance. [ _Finn needs Poe._ ]

“I’m not _Poe_.”

[ _Lie!_ ]

“It’s not a lie. Don’t talk to me about him again.”

BB-8 lets out a long stream of curses that he must’ve picked up from the pilots. Poe finds a strange sound erupting from his throat. It sounds like laughter, but there are tears choking him. The strange hiccuping and hysterical, mechanical laugh sends BB-8 skittering down the hall for the med droid.

*** 

They start sending a grief therapist to visit him. He tells her the basics: the number of guards, what kind of ore was produced and how much, where the tactical weak points of camp could be found. All information he would have supplied if this had just been a very long recon mission. The first two days he spits back data, hoping that at least now that he’s done his part for the Resistance, they’ll give him a ride somewhere far away and he can disappear into a world where no one has heard of Poe Dameron.

Then he finds out that his therapist has actually never heard of Poe Dameron. She’s very young and new to the Resistance; she’s only joined in the past few months before Poe was found. Suddenly it’s much easier to explain that he is a grotesque farce of who he once was, that he cannot sleep, then he is afraid to leave the med bay, that it would be better if his friends thought he was still dead.

“Don’t you think that that’s for them to decide?” she says softly, her blue skin gleaming under the cold, dim lights.

It takes three days before he speaks again.

 ***

It’s been four weeks since his rescue. He’s seen some of his fellow prisoners in the med bay. He hadn’t realized that he had been given a private room while the rest of them bunked in smaller groups. Some of them have handled their escape well; they chatter endlessly about what they will do next, their gratitude to the Resistance, their determination to keep fighting the First Order. Some are even more despondent than Poe. They refuse to speak or shower, some try to harm themselves or others. Some have nowhere to go, their homes blasted out of the galaxy by the First Order.

“Where’s your home?” one of them asks Poe shyly.

He feels his stomach plummet when he realizes that this _is_ his home. He turns on his heel and before he can think better of it, pushes the doors of the med bay open. He’s on the tarmac before he even realizes what he’s done. He can feel the wind ruffling his strangely choppy hair, smelling the oil and grease and burning fuel that always gets his heart pumping a little faster.

“Hey, Boss, I think you forgot something.” It’s Jessika, talking to him in the quietest voice he’s ever heard from her, but she’s got the hint of smile on her face. Poe looks down at his feet. He forgot to put on shoes.

Jess leads him over to the quartermaster and hands him a small pile of clothes. A new flight suit, to replace the one he lost in his crash, and a soft set of new clothes in just the colors he likes. He later realizes they must have been set aside for weeks, waiting for him to leave the med bay. He turns to go back to his apartment when he remembers that his apartment is also Finn’s apartment.

_Finn_.

Finn, who he hasn’t seen once in four weeks. Finn, who he refused to think about for months. Finn who, for all Poe knows, could have died on one of his own dangerous missions in the past year. The thought makes Poe want to vomit on his new flight suit.

Jess, however, pulls Poe along and after briefly knocking on the door, swings it open. “He never locks it any more.”

He takes a step inside and any remaining air in his lungs has been completely knocked out.

“Yeah,” says Jess glumly. “It’s been like this for months.”

_It_ turns out to mean that the apartment is stripped bare of almost everything. Any and all semblance of decorations are gone, as are all of their books and music. There’s no furniture to speak of, not even a bed, just a small blanket roll wrapped around a pillow. The apartment is spotless. Poe realizes in horror that this is exactly how Finn described the Stormtrooper dorms.

“Don’t worry, Boss, I kept most of your stuff in storage,” says Jess, shaking him out of his reverie. “I’ve seen plenty of people throw shit out when they’re grieving and they regret it. I figured that might happen at some point.” Poe sees in her eyes that she doubts Finn would regret it.

Whatever Poe said about not being _Poe_ anymore seems to be true for Finn as well. The Finn that Poe had once loved with every cell in his body would not have done this, would not go back to living like a Stormtrooper. And suddenly Poe is desperate to see Finn, here, now, to tell him he was wrong. He’s still Poe — well, maybe a year in a prison camp has broken some parts of him, but not the part of him that loves Finn. Not the part that wants Finn to be happy above everything else. And he has to tell Finn _right now_.

Jess barely has time to throw Poe’s old jacket over his shoulders before he’s running across the base.

*** 

It turns out Finn was off on a mission, so Poe waits an unbearable five hours before the ship touches down on the tarmac. BB-8 seems to know what to do without Poe asking.

[ _Finn! Important meeting now!_ ]

“I know, BB-8. I’ll head to the debrief as soon as I return this to Rey.”

[ _No! Important meeting now!_ ]

“Calm down, it’ll only take a second—”

[ _Now! Important! Now! Important!_ ]

“All right, all right. I’m going! Man, you are really pushy today—”

Even from across the tarmac, Poe can see Finn’s jaw clench. He approaches Poe slowly, cautiously, and Poe tries not to flinch at the anger in Finn’s eyes. The other soldiers in Finn’s squadron make a hasty exit, and the two of them are left alone under the rays of the setting sun.

They stare at each other in silence. Finn seems taller, somehow, but Poe guesses that’s probably just his own change in posture; where he once stood tall, months crouching in a mine has retrained him to slump forward. Poe flinches, realizing what he must look like. He thinks of his pathetic haircut, the way his clavicle is jutting out from his hollowed chest, the jacket that dwarfs his shivering body.

Finn blinks and looks at Poe like he’s seeing him for the first time. His eyes soften and the corners of his mouth turn up in an almost imperceptible smile.

“That’s my jacket.”

“Oh!” Flustered, Poe tries to yank himself free but Finn lays a hand on his shoulder.

“Keep it. It suits you.”

And suddenly Poe is kissing him, and Finn is kissing him back, and Poe can hardly breathe for joy. They break apart, laughing with tears streaming down their faces. They stay out on the tarmac for a long time, the sun dipping below the horizon.

In his head, Poe can hear the shouts. _Finn! Finn! Finn! Finn!_


End file.
